A business case for wellbeing

For decades now, workplace design has treated wellbeing and productivity as a trade-off. Then Covid rewrote the brief as hundreds of millions of people worldwide were forced into extended periods of working from home. At the peak of lockdowns in April–May 2020, the International Labour Organization estimated roughly 560 million people globally were working from home, a significant portion of them office workers who'd never done so before.¹ What emerged out of this period was a genuine rethinking of how we work and what we want in a workplace.

According to the 2026 Gensler Global Workplace Survey, workers now spend 55% of their workweek in the office, with the rest split between home and other locations.² Interestingly, workers say they'd ideally be in the office closer to 65% of the time, versus the 55% they're actually spending there. The gap offers a key insight. People want to be in the office more than they currently are but only when the space supports them doing their best work. When the office falls short and can’t deliver focus, flexibility or wellness, home becomes a better choice by default. People now expect the workplace to deliver for both how they work and how they feel.

The cost of getting it wrong

The impact on businesses that get it wrong is steep but most of this cost remains invisible until it shows up on a balance sheet. According to research by Hargrave et al. (2008), presenteeism (people at work but not operating at capacity) accounts for 80% of the productivity loss linked to impaired mental wellbeing.³ Absenteeism accounts for the remaining 20% but the mental strain has already taken its toll well before anyone calls in sick.³

In 2025, the annual Umbrella Wellbeing Report estimated that presenteeism costs the New Zealand economy NZ$46.6 billion a year in lost productivity.⁴  The report also found workers experiencing presenteeism operate 33% below their peak performance, equating to a loss of more than NZ$2,000 per employee, per month.⁴

Globally, the impact is even more pronounced. The World Health Organization estimates that 12 billion working days are lost each year to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy around US$1 trillion annually in lost productivity.⁵

But not all stress is bad. In fact, some stress can be conducive to performance. In 1994, Karl Halvor Teigen, a Norwegian cognitive psychologist, argued that too little challenge leads to boredom and disengagement, while too much tips into distress and impaired output.⁶ The space between, where challenge is productive rather than corrosive, is where wellbeing and performance coexist.

Why it's happening

The pressures building up on people extend well beyond the job itself. As more of our daily lives migrate online — relationships, entertainment, community, health — the opportunities for in-real-life connection and recovery have shrunk. Add political polarisation, economic uncertainty and the rapid rise of AI, and it's no surprise that burnout is becoming a serious issue in the workplace.

With burnout on the rise, we’re seeing engagement* collapsing in parallel. Globally, engagement dropped to 20% in 2025, the lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated US$10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of global GDP.⁷ DHR Global surveyed 1,500 corporate professionals, across three continents, for their 2025 report and found that more than half of workers now say burnout directly drags down their engagement, up from 34% the year prior.⁸

The bigger shift in our industry, though, is the drivers. Research from McKinsey and the University of Oxford has found that cognitive strain, not hours worked, is now the primary driver of burnout. Employees spend more than 60% of their working time navigating fragmented systems, unclear responsibilities and high-friction workflows.⁹

This matters because cognitive load is something the physical environment directly shapes. A noisy open-plan floor, a lack of spaces for focus, poor sensory conditions, no room to decompress — these aren't just comfort issues, they compound the mental cost of every task a person does that day.

“Burnout is no longer a personal wellbeing issue. It is a structural performance risk.” 

HRD Connect, Burnout Is Back: How Organisations Can Reset for a Healthier, More Sustainable 2026.⁹

 

What well-designed workplaces do differently

If cognitive strain is one of the key drivers, then how can design help?

Design for the full range of work modes. Focused work, collaboration, learning, recovery and connection all require different environmental conditions. A workplace that offers only one mode, usually open-plan collaboration, forces everyone to do every kind of work in a space suited to just one mode. The problem compounds when those spaces are also undersupplied for the number of people in them.

Treat quiet as infrastructure. The ability to focus is no longer a preference, it's a performance requirement. Gensler's 2025 workplace research confirmed privacy for deep-focus work as a top priority across age groups and industries.¹⁰ Workplaces that don't protect access to quiet spaces push focused work home by default.

Make wellbeing physical, not programmatic. Wellness-supporting design is built into the workplace — through air quality, acoustics, daylight, biophilia, temperature control and spaces that allow genuine rest. These are the conditions that lower cognitive load before work starts.

Reduce friction. If cognitive strain is mostly about navigating fragmented systems and unclear environments, a well-designed workplace reads intuitively. Spatial logic, wayfinding, the visibility of different zones — these quiet design decisions reduce the mental load that comes with simply being at work.

Design for recovery, not just performance. The assumption that a workplace exists only to drive output is what created the presenteeism problem in the first place. Spaces that give people somewhere to decompress, such as analogue zones, outdoor access and genuinely private rooms, are what make sustained performance possible.

As Dr Dougal Sutherland, Umbrella's Principal Psychologist, puts it: "Creating a culture where people can take time off when they need it and ensuring work itself is designed to support wellbeing will lead to healthier, more productive teams."⁴

Workplace design is one of the most effective tools an organisation has to address a crisis it can otherwise only treat with policies and programmes.

What "well-designed" actually means

"Well-designed" is one of the most overused phrases in our industry but Gensler helpfully defines it as: “an office environment that overlays functionality with a great workplace experience, ultimately driving better individual, team and organisational outcomes.”¹¹

Well-designed workplaces significantly outperform their lower-performing counterparts.¹¹ High-performing workplaces, defined as those scoring in the top quartile for both effectiveness and experience, deliver up to three times the positive impact on individual, team and organisational outcomes compared to low-performing ones.¹¹

How a space feels and how a space functions are no longer separate briefs.

What people are asking for

A few consistent signals are coming through in recent workplace research:

Privacy for deep-focus work. The Gensler Global Workplace Survey 2025 found this to be a top priority across age groups and industries.¹⁰

Multi-dimensional floor plans. Breakout areas, quiet corners, meeting rooms and third spaces. Work today moves between creative and routine, collaborative and self-directed, and spaces need to be able to adapt accordingly. We’re saying goodbye to the days of open plan offices.

Analogue balance. As digital tools intensify, people are asking for tech-free, calm rooms that give the brain somewhere to rest.

Wellness amenities. This came out at number one on the Gensler 2026 list of future-workplace hopes.² Workers want spaces that actively support physical and mental health.

The design brief is shifting

As AI reshapes how work gets done, the physical workplace is taking on a new role as an investment in people. Spaces that support wellbeing, learning and collaboration will be the ones that help organisations attract talent and get the best out of their teams.²

For architects and designers, the implication is direct. A workplace that delivers only for efficiency, or only for comfort, is a workplace that underperforms. The challenge now is designing workplaces that support individuals and teams doing their best work throughout the whole working day — focus and collaboration, pushing and recovering, often in the same few hours.

*(According to Gallup, engagement measures the psychological attachment workers have to their work, their team and their employer.)

References

1. International Labour Organization (2021), Working from home: Estimating the worldwide potential. ilo.org/resource/brief/potential-practice-preliminary-findings-numbers-workers-working-home-during

2. Gensler, Global Workplace Survey 2026. gensler.com/gri/global-workplace-survey-2026

3. Hargrave et al., "EAP treatment impact on presenteeism and absenteeism," Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 2008.

4. Umbrella Wellbeing, Annual Wellbeing Report 2025: Presenteeism at Work. umbrella.org.nz/umbrellawellbeingreport-2025

5. World Health Organization, Mental health at work, 2024. who.int

6. Teigen, "Yerkes-Dodson: a law for all seasons," Theory & Psychology, 1994.

7. Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026.

8. DHR Global, Workforce Trends Report 2026.

9. HRD, "Burnout is back: how organisations can reset for a healthier, more sustainable 2026," December 2025. hrdconnect.com

10. Gensler, Global Workplace Survey 2025. gensler.com/gri/global-workplace-survey-2025

11. Gensler, What makes a high-performing workplace? gensler.com/blog/what-makes-a-high-performing-workplace